Wrap-around services

[Guest guest]

Hello everyone,

Hard to believe I've been on here for 8 years!!!! is a senior this year.

I wish I could give everyone his case manager. He has been the greatest and

biggest asset in all of 's school experience! He's had for the past

3 years (which has been THE BEST move on the school's part-to allow him to keep

him on his case load.) really respects him and looks up to him. And the

case manager can push him and will respond. It's been wonderful. I have

had the least amount of work to do on my end for the past 3 years than his whole

school time!

Anyhow, just as I am having one leave the system, I have another one coming up.

's having some auditory issues. I haven't quite been able to pinpoint what

exactly is going on with her. She's been in speech since she was 22 months for

one thing. My husband has an auditory processing disorder, so it wouldn't be

something " new " in the family if she does. She has some aspie tendencies and now

is starting to show some OCD ones. However, we have been unable to get the

school to recognize any problems. We did a child study back in May, and the

teacher sat there and argued that she was FINE! However, by the end of the

meeting, she did finally admit that could have developed coping skills such

as looking at others to see what they were doing. So, it was determined that she

did have some possible auditory issue and needed visuals. They determined that

she would have another child study in conjunction with her IEP in Nov.

We have been blessed with the teacher she received for 3rd-grade. My oldest

daughter had her and we are familiar with her and know she is very educated and

helpful for the kids. She sent home a note about her teaching history and I

found out that she started out her teaching career teaching special education.

So hopefully she'll " see " what we are seeing. Even the speech pathologist blames

her inability to " hear " things correctly on her speech. They claim she writes

like she speaks " . Well, duh, but she isn't fixing things she is corrected on.

Her sentence structure is not always in order and her tenses are out of whack.

My point here is that I worked on a math worksheet with her yesterday. I had to

" spoon feed " her everything. She didn't understand the concepts. Didn't even

have the basic concepts that were needed to figure out the problems. She

couldn't figure out if she had the number 12 and needed to get to the number 17,

how to go about it-whether to add or subtract. Then, she couldn't subtract

2-digit numbers. She'd try and look like she was trying to figure it out in her

head, but she had no idea.

It was the same thing over 4 different times and she didn't understand the

concept whatsoever. Even though I went through it step-by-step, used counters,

etc. Then it went to the same thing in written (problem) form and she definitely

didn't understand it. So, again, I had to spoon feed her.

My problem is that I don't know how to explain it in a way that she understands

it. Even Casey jumped in and tried to help. So, the two of us were trying to

help her with this worksheet that she had no understanding of.

I've never had these types of issues with anyone before and was wondering what

kind of " wrap-around " services might be available. It's been a long time since

I've had to deal with the idea of wrap-around services, and I just wanted a

" heads up " of what I might be able to get for her.

Another thing they are doing right now are factor families where you have 5+1=6

and 1+5=6; 6-1=5 and 6-5=1. She had to write one (after doing several exercises

showing them, and she wrote, 1+5=6 and 5-6=1. Yes, the last one is how she wrote

it. She doesn't realize that 6 is bigger than 5 and unless you want a negative

factor (which they don't do for another 2 years), it doesn't work.

I am so frustrated at this point that I was about in tears because I felt like I

couldn't help her to the point of being able to get her to understand.

I am going to have her tested for auditory once Tom's insurance takes effect. I

started the process this summer, only to find that I had to take her to another

place that didn't take Medicaid. Now that Tom has a job and insurance, I hope I

can get this done before the child study and have more evidence to show.

Thanks for any ideas, or answers to the wrap-around service question.

-Melinda Hall